Monday, June 29, 2015

Beautiful ride today. After traversing the city of Livorno I found Via di Montenero and began climbing. It's a beautiful winding road up the hill to Castellaccio. From here I began a long, forested descent on Via Quercianella to the junction with SS-1, the coastal highway. It resembles California Highway 1, spectacular twisty road on cliffs above the sea. Unfortunately like Highway 1 it's also very busy, so I opted out of riding it today. Maybe very early on a Sunday morning I'll try it, when no 18-wheelers are on the road and sightseers are still enjoying their complimentary breakfasts.Today instead I headed back up the climb to Castellaccio. A castle tower was visible in the distance, I saw a side road, I thought I'd explore. Alas the narrow lane deteriorated, then became dirt, then steeply-descending rough gravel, small boulders. Being stubborn I kept going. Plus a guy (even older than me!) was climbing this on his MTB in the opposite direction. Anyway, I avoided crashing and finally arrived at rough pavement. At a T-intersection I went steeply down to the right and ended up in La Vedetta and then my goal: Santuario di Montenero. Nice church here. Then I continued down Viale del Tirreno, which has some gorgeous long, looping switchbacks suitable for fleets of tour buses bringing pilgrims to the santuario. I followed the same route through busy Livorno and made it home unscathed. Note: I have no GPS track because my Garmin battery died yesterday. Inexplicably, I have a USB charger at home but opted not to bring it. Also I've omitted a blog entry for yesterday's ride on Via Popogna. It's a nice climb but joins the same road (Via del Valle Benedetta) I already wrote about, so seemed redundant. Also I lost my iPhone on the gravel road home (Via dell'Uliveta) but a very kind Italian jogger had found it and helped me beyond the call of duty to recover it. Such a kind person! VV Italia!